Liv Helga Dommasnes (Eds.) The Farm as a Social...

Liv Helga Dommasnes Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann Alf Tore Hommedal (Eds.)

The Farm as a Social Arena


Liv Helga Dommasnes Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann

Alf Tore Hommedal (Eds.)

The Farm as a Social Arena

Waxmann 2016Münster • New York


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Cover Design: Anne Breitenbach, Münster Cover Picture: The farm Velke in Hardanger, Western Norway. Watercolor by Catharina Hermine Kølle (1788–1859). © The University Museum of Bergen, University of Bergen, Norway Typesetting: Sven Solterbeck, Münster Print: Hubert & Co., Göttingen

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Preface

This volume was originally planned by a group of Norwegian archaeologists seek-ing an alternative approach to prehistoric farms. Although we realised that recent research focussing on the farm as an economic unit had brought new insights, we also thought that something was missing: we wanted to explore the role of the farm as a social unit through prehistory and medieval times.

Our network, established in 2010, and consisting of senior researchers from four of the Norwegian universities, was financed by The Norwegian Research Council through several meetings and seminars until the end of 2015. By then we had also invited colleagues from foreign universities to participate in our network, and ar-ranged two international meetings: a session at the Glasgow 21st European Meeting of Archaeologists 2015 and a workshop in Bergen, Norway.

Many people have contributed to this volume. We want to thank the Norwegian Research Council for its support over a period of five years, and The University Mu-seum of Bergen for funding the final editorial meetings. Special thanks go to our authors, who accepted very short deadlines and a sometimes rather strict editorial regime. Dr. Melanie Wrigglesworth has been responsible for the language revision. She has turned many different varieties of English into fluent academic texts. From the German side, Jun.-Prof. Daniela Hofmann has performed similar wonders on the abstracts. Waxmann’s Executive Editor Beate Plugge M.A. and her collegues have dealt competently with details of the layout and other matters relating to the printing process. Thank you all!

Bergen and Berlin. August 10th, 2016The editors


Contents

Introduction: The farm as a social arena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Liv Helga Dommasnes

Sheep, dog and manMulti-species becomings leading to new ways of living in Early Bronze Age longhouses on Jæren, Norway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Kristin Armstrong Oma

Unlocking identitiesKeys and locks from Iron Age farms in eastern Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53Emma Nordström

Understandings – burial practice, identity and social tiesThe Horvnes Iron Age burials, a peephole into the farming society of Helgeland, North-Norway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Birgitta Berglund

Individual lifeworlds and social structured societies in Merovingian settlements from the Munich Gravel Plain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann

One thousand years of tradition and change on two West-Norwegian farms AD 200–1200 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127Liv Helga Dommasnes and Alf Tore Hommedal

A shattered farm: Changes in making space from pagan to Christian Norway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171Kristin Armstrong Oma

House, farmyard and landscape as social arena in a time of transition . . . . . . . . 191Helge Sørheim

Between chiefdom and kingdomA case study of the Iron Age farm Borg in Lofoten, Arctic Norway . . . . . . . . . . 219Inger Storli

Constructing society in Viking Age Iceland: Rituals and power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245Timothy Carlisle and Karen Milek


The social structures of High Medieval rural settlements An example from the Northern Rhineland, Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273Timo Bremer

“Being a vicar at the end of the world” The priesthood at Alstahaug vicarage in North-Norway presents its identity through the household and daily life before AD 1750 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297Birgitta Berglund

Authors and editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323


Introduction: The farm as a social arena

Liv Helga Dommasnes

During the last decades, social structure has been one of the most central research themes in archaeology. A gradual shift from focus on the prehistoric finds and monu-ments as such to the social life that they were parts of has developed within different academic traditions, combined with an increased awareness of the importance of using varied theoretical approaches.

As a consequence of this shift, the point of departure for formulating research approaches has also changed, from archaeological find categories to questions gener-ated from theoretical considerations. This development has brought archaeology a long way forward into the common domain of the humanities. In such a process, something can be lost, however. In the case of the farm, the fact that it is not only an archaeological category, but was also a (pre)historic one, making up the frame-work of most people’s lives and potential arenas of developments shaping history, has somehow fallen out of focus.

The background of this volume is a Norwegian research network focussing on the social arena aspect of the farm. Studies from Norway therefore dominate this volume, supplied with case studies from Sweden, Iceland and Germany, reminding us that farms were to be found under very different climatic and social conditions during both prehistoric and medieval times.

Why focus on the farm rather than on social structure? This is not a question of either – or. We need both, but in our opinion the farm where people did in fact live, is a good starting point – the farm was what Gutsmiedl-Schümann in this volume refers to as people’s “lifeworld” (after Schütz/Luckmann 1979). Such was probably the case in most settled agricultural pre-urban societies. Starting here therefore brings us close to the people and allows us to adopt a bottom up rather than a top down perspective, following processes instead of starting with the results. This approach is prominent in most of the papers in this volume.

Standpoint theories, which argue that knowledge is always socially situated, serve as a general theoretical background for the project. Some of these theories also claim that by taking on the standpoint of the underprivileged, one will be able to discover aspects of society that are invisible from top positions, either because they are consid-ered irrelevant or because they represent experiences unknown to the upper classes (e. g. Harding 2004). Related to standpoint theories is the approach often referred to as “maintenance archaeology”. Maintenance activities here refer to the many daily tasks that are needed to keep life going and uphold social stability. Although the term refers to practices rather than space, many such tasks were performed in the home sphere, e. g. on the farm, and were often referred to as domestic, and therefore unim-


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portant. Domestic labour provides food and cloth, healthcare and protection against the weather, and has to be considered as essential for all societies. In the modern world, however, the main criterion of value is money, and as domestic work has often been unpaid, it has dropped out of focus in Western scholarship.

Some such tasks, often associated with women, have been found to have struc-tural functions, however. First and foremost they have to do with upholding relations between people. They often entail specialised knowledge, and may have the poten-tial to affect the long-term development of society (Gonzáles-Marcén et al. 2008, 6; Montón-Subías 2010). Studying social dynamics on a small scale, it is claimed, has the potential to reveal previously unrecognised relations between the trivial activities of everyday life and important changes in history. We think that farms will most probably have been places where many such changes were set in motion.

What is a farm?

Common to social units called farms everywhere in the world, is that they produce food, by cultivation, or by keeping animals for meat and for secondary products as for example milk, wool and hides, and in some cases for their labour. Without these ingredients it would not be a farm. Most often we will find both cultivation and animals. In many parts of Norway animal husbandry will be more important than cultivation, due to climatic conditions. For the same reason, northern farms need houses for animals and crops as well as for people, and land for grazing the animals and for cultivation.

In addition to being family seats, the Nordic farm in prehistory and into modern times was home and workplace to the people who lived there, owners or tenants with family, relatives, guests, hired handicraft specialists, farm workers and slaves, crossing social divisions. It was also where children were socialised and educated and where old and sick people were cared for, and the venue for most of their social life from everyday life to feasts, funerals and religious cult.

No wonder then that the farm had a place in mental landscapes. In Old Norse cosmology the universe was conceptualised as three concentric circles. In the inner circle lived the gods, men in the middle and in the outer circle there were various dangerous species like giants, and chaos ruled. In all three parts of this universe there were farms. Historian of religion, Gro Steinsland, has suggested (2005, 107–108) that the Old Norse farm was organised along the same lines as the universe. The high seat (which was reserved for the couple owning the farm) is equalled with the home of the gods. The farmyard and infields were areas where humans and gods communicated through cult and rites, while the outfields were frightening and dangerous.

In sum, the farm was a safe haven in a dangerous world. In sparingly populated areas like most of the Scandinavian peninsula, this was definitely the social unit that



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most people would relate to, probably more so than in densely populated regions as for example central Europe, where villages were common. – Most Norwegian farms were quite remote1 (cf. also the front cover of this volume). Even if some farms would be parts of larger settlements, the nearest neighbour outside the farm would still be quite a distance away. There would be very little infrastructure, and travelling could be difficult, especially during winters. Where people live far apart from each other, they have to be self-sufficient. In northern Scandinavia, this has been the rule for people living on isolated farms in the countryside until the last century.

The farm was so central in people’s minds that when some people in early medi-eval times started to live in market-places or small towns, the term followed the peo-ple, who moved to their bygård (literally: city farm). Until recently, almost everybody living in rural areas had to live on a farm, including civil servants and professionals. Even in modern times, a rural vicar or doctor would therefore have part of their income from the farms where they lived (“the vicar’s farm” and “the doctor’s farm”). Such farms were normally owned by the state and worked by a tenant, but could also be privately owned, as exemplified in Berglund’s paper on Petter Dass in this volume. The knowledge of the need for self-reliance that is reflected in these arrangements has been an integrated part of research into the Norwegian farm from the very beginning.

Perhaps because of their position in mental as well as practical life, farms have also been important elements in the identities of people. Even today, most Norwegian family names are originally farm names, and until recently, country people introduc-ing themselves always mentioned which farm they currently lived on.

Former research on the farm in Norway

The oldest literary sources describing farms and farm life in Norway/Scandinavia were written down in the Middle Ages (12th and 13th centuries). These were mainly sagas and skaldic poetry, purporting to describe life during the Viking Age, but there is no consensus about their value as sources to this earlier period. Old Norse laws (“Landscape laws”) which were also written down in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, although they were probably functioning from the late Viking Age onwards, have information about farms, rights and regulations and rules of inheritance, among other things.

These were the main sources that the 19th century scholars and writers had to Viking Age society and its structure. Archaeology was then in its very beginning as an academic discipline, and theoretical approaches to material culture as a source of information were not very developed. Even so, the idea of the farm as the basic unit in the early agricultural society of Norway goes back to this era, and is still accepted

1 In post-medieval times primarily, farms could be divided into two or more smaller parts (bruk), making room for more than one family with separate households.


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by the majority of scholars in the field. The farm has since had a central place in the grand narratives of Norway, as a basis for food production, as a family seat and sometimes as seats of chiefs and later, kings, based among other things, on the above mentioned medieval sources.

The early research was dominated by historians. Archaeological investigations started with excavations of a few house-sites during the first decade of the 20th cen-tury. In 1927, the newly founded Meeting of Norwegian Archaeologists made a list of priorities for future archaeological investigations. On top of that list was the Iron Age farm with its houses, fences and fields.

When the 1927 projects were planned, Norway was still a society of small, inde-pendent farmers, many of whom sympathised with the socialist/social democratic movement now growing stronger all over Europe. In the Norwegian academic setting, the 1930s have been characterised as the decade of the farmer’s sons, meaning that the sons of farmers now found their way into university in increasing numbers. There was still only one university, situated in the capital, Oslo, and we may suspect that some of the rural students felt a bit lost in this well-established academic atmosphere. In archaeological studies of the farm, however, some of them found a subject where their rural backgrounds were in fact an advantage. Many of these archaeologists kept close ties to their childhood communities, and contributed to the development of a strong tradition of publishing local prehistory. The first doctoral thesis based on an archaeological investigation of a farm was published in 1953 (Hagen 1953).

The work continued after World War II, now with an ambition to investigate the farm as part of a larger social structure. At this time, the farm was still conceived as a men’s world. So was academia. Women of the past were almost invisible. The women of the present had to wait for another generation. During the 1970s, however, the daughters of the middle class found their way into the universities, where they became acquainted with standpoint theories like Marxism and feminism. Realis-ing that there was still no place for them in the narratives of the distant past, the small but increasing numbers of women in archaeology set out to carve a niche for themselves and their foremothers. Numerous studies especially of Iron Age/Early medieval women were carried out, often supported by new theoretical approaches. Gendered divisions of labour as well as social roles and ranks were popular subjects. Burials came back into focus, mainly because this is where we meet the individuals of the past, and where gender, rank and work/responsibilities are often symbolised – or so we think.

From this point there was only a short road back to the farm. In the West Norwe-gian Iron/Early Medieval Age especially, burial mounds are placed very close to the farm houses, and burials have often taken place on the individual farms. Both women and men were buried here, and it is generally assumed that these were the owners of the farm (e. g. Skre 1997). Equally important when gender is an issue, is that the burials often contain tools and thus seem to indicate which tasks were considered



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women’s work and which were men’s. The fact that Iron Age society in the North was gendered is evident not only from burials, but also from written sources, where some of the rights and duties of women and men are described. Even more important than gender was rank, however. A code of honour defined the rights and duties of the two genders and the top ranks.

Recent developments

Over time, it was realised that the development of a modern society’s industry and infrastructure increasingly endangered protected ancient monuments, including farm sites. As archaeological excavation work in Norway was – and still is – the re-sponsibility of the Directorate for Cultural Heritage and five regional archaeologi-cal museums/universities, investigations into the farms also continued locally, from north to south. While the earliest projects related to the farms aimed at identifying them and describing the houses and other structures of prehistoric and medieval farms, recent fieldwork has been concentrated on houses and house-types, cultiva-tion, and to some extent, domestic animals.

The top priority within this modern framework has been houses and settlements. Numerous house-sites have been excavated all over the country during the last three to four decades, most of them identified as farm houses. While former investigations had focused mainly on Iron Age farms, the chronological framework has now been extended back to the Neolithic, showing a remarkable conservatism in house types through prehistory, although seemingly small changes in building traditions may re-flect important developments in farm life, as discussed by Oma chapter 1 this volume. For the Christian Middle Ages, however, the finds are surprisingly few. This could be due to new building techniques that leave few traces (cf. Sørheim this volume).

The majority of these investigations have been rescue excavations. An exception is “The West Norwegian farm project” initiated by the University of Bergen and the University College of Sogn and Fjordane. This project was primarily aimed at dating the origin of the individual farm and the cultural landscape it produced rather than analysing its social role (Øye 2002).

Unfortunately, the technique that makes it possible to find the prehistoric houses, namely the systematic removal of topsoil in order to find traces in the underground, also destroys the remains – if any – of human and other activity at the level where the house floors used to be. The main focus has therefore so far been on the farmyard with its houses, and with the farm as the site of food production, which is admittedly the central function of any farm. But it also means that although the farm has for a long time had a central position in Norwegian archaeological research, some dimen-sions have been lacking.


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The farm as a social arena

As far back as one can see, farms tended to be scattered in the Norwegian landscape in such a way that they only in exceptional cases made up something resembling a village. Often, and even into modern times, the farm was the local community. In isolated settings, thralls and masters lived together, worked and learned from each other, and were dependent on each other. Over time and as social stratification devel-oped, the different strata of society were reflected at the individual farms, especially the larger ones, and between farms. While a medium-sized farm would house the nuclear family or maybe two generations, a large farm would, in addition to fam-ily, have a household consisting of hired help, slaves, sometimes guests and artisans. Every need had to be catered for on, or through, the farm, from food and housing to the education of children and religious needs. From this point of view the farm becomes a social arena, and the people who lived there were agents on this scene. And, as pointed out by Gutsmiedl-Schümann this volume, “the space in which peo-ple are living and communicating with each other, is the space where social reality is constructed.” Understanding the past starts with understanding the dynamics of its basic structures and agents. Farm communities would be tight-knit, but by no means closed. Visitors were the rule rather than the exception. As there was no alterna-tive accommodation, any farm would now and then house travellers. Another social aspect of the larger farms from the Late Roman period through the Middle Ages was the feasts that were sometimes held by chiefs/warlords for their allies (Enright 1996; Sigurdsson 2010) in order to strengthen their alliances.

Generally speaking, the people of the farm would live very close together, es-pecially during the long and dark winters when almost all work had to take place indoors. Different kinds of maintenance work were probably going on more or less continuously. Small-scale carpentry, weaving and needle-work would be winter tasks taking place in the common living-space2 along with food-preparation and meals. Sometimes the craft production may have been of even greater social and economic importance than traditional farming activities, as suggested in the case of the Viking Age farm at Hopperstad, Vik in Sogn (Dommasnes/Hommedal this volume). The large common room was also where people on the farm would meet to exchange information, tell stories and keep the memory of former generations alive.

The relations between all those people of different origins, ranks and genders are among our foci. So is the relationship between people and animals. Generally speaking, people of the past, independently of their work and rank, lived closer to animals than we do. Everybody would have been surrounded by animals, while a modern person, whether living in a city or in a village, hardly ever meets one unless

2 Large-scale weaving probably took place in pit-houses, known from several places in Eu-rope.



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(s)he keeps pets. On the farm they lived together on a daily basis, for a long time even under the same roof. They also worked together, as for example man and horse. Cooperation was always necessary – when handling the sheep, milking the cow or collecting eggs from the hens. In transhumance, which is a practice going back at least to the Iron Age in the north, young girls moved to the summer pastures in the mountains with the cattle, and stayed there for several months. Smaller children acted as herders.

Modern research has shown that the thinking on the relationship between hu-mans and animals has changed over time. Similarities rather than differences may have been recognised in other cultures and at other times. In Scandinavian Iron Age burials animals and people seem to have been cremated together and their bones treated in the same way (Mansrud 2005), and in Viking Age culture it is more than hinted that shape-shifting was a reality (Hedeager 2011, Price 2014). This familiar-ity with animals, domesticated as well as wild, leads us once again to consider the farm in mental landscapes – collective ones in the Iron Age cosmology or individual ones as in people’s habitus (Bourdieu 1977), in terms of who you socialised with, the familiarity with animals, the small community and its material manifestations. We have already mentioned that the houses where people lived changed very little over the centuries from the late Bronze Age until the Middle Ages. The same goes for the infields, which were organised with one or two parallel longhouses and a cattle lane leading from the byre part of one of the longhouses through the farmyard to the grazing area. To many people, this was their entire world, conditioning their thinking as well as their bodily reflexes – their (gendered) lifeworlds in Schütz/Luckmanns’ (1979) terminology, which also provides the background for a person’s practices and communications (Habermas 1981).

At least from the Roman Age onwards, the most prominent farm people – prob-ably the owners – were buried on the farm infields, often in large mounds. Large farms, which would sometimes also be chief ’s farms, were also arenas for public cult activities and some of these again had churches raised on the infields in Early Chris-tian times. Churches may in such cases have signalled both the coming of a new religion, continuation of religious leadership and of secular power.

Papers and approaches

In this volume, farms and related topics from the Bronze Age (starting c. BC 1800) through the High Middle Ages and into the 17th century are discussed. As a conse-quence of the Norwegian background of the project, the geographical setting is in the majority of the papers the coastal region of Norway, from Rogaland in the south to Lofoten in the North. Two more papers (Nordström; Carlisle/Milek) refer in general terms to the same (Norse) tradition while yet another two (Gutsmiedl-Schümann;


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Bremer) discuss farms in German villages from the Early and High Middle Ages (5th/6th to 13th century) respectively. In addition to addressing topics common to all farms discussed here, the papers from geographical and social environments outside Norway serve as important reminders that whether isolated or spatially integrated; farms are always part of wider societies, and formed by their relations to the outer world and people that surround them.

Although generally tuned to the theoretical frameworks sketched above, ap-proaches in the individual papers vary with the particular questions addressed and the sources available. The farm as the framework of people’s daily lives is addressed in several papers. In the first paper of this volume, Oma takes as her point of de-parture the relationship between humans and animals when she tries to understand a seemingly small change in architecture, namely the transition from two-aisled to three-aisled longhouses. She finds the explanation in the secondary products revolu-tion. When people started to keep sheep because of the milk and the wool, they also needed to handle them more often. This may have been why three-aisled longhouses became popular, as they made it easier to house animals indoors. Oma further sketches how the relationship between people and sheep changed during the Bronze Age at Jæren in Southwest Norway. The sheep moved in with their people, where they became household members and contributed to the household through wool and milk. As the relationship between humans and sheep developed, it became a relation of understanding and trust rather than domination, she claims.

In her second paper, Oma moves in time to the end of the Iron Age, when the now age-old three-aisled longhouse gradually went out of use, and was replaced by several smaller houses. Once again animals were involved. This time it was about religion and ontological status. With Christianity, Oma claims, the ontological status of animals was changed. In the Iron Age animal styles, animals and humans could be depicted as half human, half animal, and some humans were thought to be able to shift shape into animals. Some animals shared houses with humans and were some-times buried with humans: basically, they had much in common. In Christianity, on the other hand, the differences were stressed. Humans were close to God, animals were not. They were seen as subservient to humans, no longer worthy of sharing our houses. Consequently, the age-old longhouse went out of use and the farm was divided up in several small buildings with different functions.

The very same medieval change into a new farm architecture is addressed from another point of view, namely a technological one, in Sørheim’s paper, where he ar-gues that a new technology was the reason why the age-old tradition of stave-built longhouses was replaced with smaller ones built in the corner-notching technique, which had long been known in other parts of Europe. This architectural change also led to a change not only in the housing of animals, but in the relations between people of the farm, in that they were from now on scattered in many small houses instead of sharing a large longhouse. One would think that this increased the mental distance



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between people – servants and masters – as well. And whatever cause we accept for this architectural change, with Christianity the old farm was shattered not only in the sense that people and animals were separated. So were the generations. From now on, former generations were no longer buried at their own farms, but on communal graveyards connected to a church.

In our one Swedish case study, Nordström studies aspects of life on the farm through keys and locks on two Swedish farms, one in the central Mälaren area in central Sweden and one on the Baltic island of Gotland, dated to the Migration pe-riod and the Viking Age respectively. She discusses the finds of keys and their use at the farms, a topic that has not been addressed very often. Nordström focusses here on the idea of locking, and its implications for private property and identity. Generally, keys have been associated with mighty housewives and their roles in managing the farm resources. In her study, however, Nordström finds that keys have belonged to men and women both. Keys seem to imply private property and were possibly associ-ated with people’s identities. It is interesting to note that when looking at Roman Age warrior burials and men’s burials in the Viking Age town Birka in Sweden, she found a possible link between weapons and locked chests.

Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann takes us to Bavaria in Merovingian times, which in this region means late 5th-8th century. Here, the farms were far from isolated, but rather so close that it is hard to decide “where one farm begins and the other ends”, and being close to communication lines seems to have been of the utmost impor-tance – this is all very different from the Norwegian situation. Two settlements, Kirchheim and Aschheim, are focussed on. An even better source to social structure is the burials, however. While large cemeteries were the rule in the earlier part of the period in question, farmyard burials came into use towards the end of the 6th century. In both cases the burials were equipped with grave goods. This is of special interest seen in relation to the Norwegian discussion regarding the transition from heathen to Christian burial rites, as the lack of grave goods has been one of the criteria used to identify Christian burials in Scandinavia, and farmyard burials are supposed to end with the formal conversion and organisation of the church.

Burials are the main subject of two more papers. Berglund describes in detail two special graves at the Sandnes farm in North Norway, and finds that they were both collective graves used over a period of hundreds of years. One grave she identifies as that of the people of the farm, while the other one may have been reserved for women specialist workers – in her own words providing “a peephole into the social life of the coastal farms of Helgeland”. She comes up with surprising results: while one grave seems to house men and women with close connections to the farm, the other holds women only. Berglund concludes that these (five) women, who were probably only loosely connected to the farm, were a group especially skilled in crafts, and perhaps in (magic) runes and healing. For this, they were provided with a special burial place


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on the outskirts of the farm. If so, this is new and interesting information about me-dieval farm life.

The other paper that takes burials as a point of departure is the long-term study by Dommasnes and Hommedal, following two farms in the Vik settlement on the Sognefjord, Western Norway, over a period of almost one thousand years (c. 200–1200 AD). Starting with ten monumental Roman Age burial mounds, interpreted as symbols of power, the farms and their inhabitants are followed through the Viking Age into the era of Christianisation, the formal conversion and the unification of the country with new symbols of power, the churches. Burials, especially those of power-ful people as was the case in most of the examples mentioned here, are mainly public events, even if they are conducted on a farm. Another (semi-)public aspect of farm life was the feasts that chiefs and magnates regularly seem to have held perhaps from Roman times through the Middle Ages (Bårdseth 2009; Sigurdsson 2010) to secure the continued loyalty of their allies. When the first churches were built in medieval Norway, they were connected to individual farms. The development that this new religion set in motion was, however, one that led public worship away from the indi-vidual farms into the greater society, and ultimately to the universal Catholic church.

Although it is very probable that both the two Vik farms and the northern Sandnes farm referred to above had halls, these could hardly match the more than 80 metres long hall building excavated on the northernmost Norwegian farm discussed in this volume, namely the chiefly Borg farm in Lofoten, North Norway. This farm is the point of departure for Storli, who discusses the Borg farm, its environs, houses and the impressive finds from the site. Through archaeological and written sources, she discusses the local society and cultural environment, including how the Borg chieftain may have played a role in the politics of Viking Age Norway. Towards the end of the paper, she describes his (postulated) decision to leave Borg and the fight for sovereignty in order to look for a new life on Iceland. Storli also suggests that the posts that had been removed from the Borg house may have travelled with him, to be thrown on the sea so that they could guide him to his new land. And keep the memory of his old farm alive?

On Iceland, Carlisle and Milek take over, and introduce us to some interesting finds from Viking Age Icelandic farm houses, characterised as “structured” deposits or foundation deposits, tentatively interpreted as traces of house offerings, the Norse settlers’ way of adapting to their new environment and conditions of life. The depos-its vary from a walrus carcass built into a wall to iron blooms and scattered finds of a human tooth and a wide variety of other small finds. In each case the structured deposits are taken to relate to sources of wealth on the farms in question. The authors suggest that the deposits may have been used in the negotiation of social standing in this brand new society.

In our second paper dealing with German medieval society, Bremer discusses the village Pier in Northern Rhineland, from the Roman period through High Medieval



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times. While written sources have previously dominated the discussion of medieval social structures, landscape archaeology has now been developed into a forceful tool and a new approach to the exploration of the rural past in the area. From the Roman until High Medieval times there was an enormous population increase, accompanied by a very complex social structure. Towns influenced rural life, and in the rural areas farms and noble estates “were integrated in a complex settlement system and could not be regarded as isolated ‘small worlds’ ” (Bremer this volume). Studying individual farms in such a setting makes little sense, and the paper is an important reminder of the widely varying social conditions in medieval Europe. A feudal society as de-scribed here was never fully developed in Norway. However, after the unification of Norway under one king and the formal Church organisation developed, these insti-tutions became great landowners, inspired by feudal Europe.

The chronologically latest paper in this volume is written by Berglund, and pre-sents some of her results from an excavation of the North-Norwegian site of a vicar-age, namely the one where the 17th century vicar, hymnist, poet and large personality Petter Dass (1647–1707) and his descendants lived. Petter Dass is still a household name in Norway, and his hymns are still sung in Norwegian churches every Sunday. The unique opportunity to follow how he used material culture to construct his Eu-ropean identity in the North of Norway is therefore of general interest, even more so as it also demonstrates the potential of archaeological evidence in such matters.

Why the farm?

The main objective of this volume is to draw your attention to a gap in the scholarship on the prehistoric and medieval farm, in that its social function has until now been more or less disregarded in archaeology. The sources may be less complete than one would wish for, but even so, concentrating on this aspect brings some new insights. First of all, focussing on the basic unit of society makes it easier to follow processes of continuity and change over time. In spite of many changes, the overall impression is stability: the farm was the social unit that almost everybody related to over the centuries.

One change was the position of the farm in the structure of society. Over time, it changed from ancestral site in the founding period of settled farming and chiefdoms, to farms of varying sizes and statuses, ending in the Middle Ages with clusters of farms (estates) controlled by institutions like the church and kingship. Architectural conventions changed, although slowly, and following this, the structure of the farm-yard. With changing farm houses and yard, the relations between those who lived on the farm, humans and animals, were also altered.

The farm in mental images is an aspect following us explicitly or implicitly through most of the papers, and we have been able to identify some of the ideolo-


Liv Helga Dommasnes

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gies behind the development. Among such ideological changes were probably the conceptions of animals – and the farm itself – in myths and religion, in connection with burial rites, and in ontological statuses. The farm’s central place in the human mind is also expressed through cult activities and farmyard burials, both in heathen and in Christian times.

This again brings us closer to the people of the past, and enables us to consider the relations of these people, how they interacted with each other and influenced each other’s lives and history. Some of our authors have followed small-scale events and developments on the farm, or looked very closely at events and processes, discover-ing unexpected connections and relations, or demonstrating that seemingly small changes may have profound consequences. Some farms have been home to mighty people, whose rise and fall we have been able to follow. The physical and mental frameworks of people’s lives were also parts of the interaction: the surrounding na-ture, neighbours or lack of neighbours, the farm infields with the houses, animals, people and deities. This was the architecture that formed social life at the farm.

Bibliography

Bourdieu 1997: Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a theory of practice (Cambridge 1977).Bårdseth 2009: Gro Anita Bårdseth. The Roman Age Hall and the Warrior-Aristocracy:

Reflections upon the Hall at Missingen, South-East Norway. Norwegian Archaeological Review 42/2, 2009, 146–158.

Enright 1996: Michael J. Enright, Lady with a Mead Cup. Ritual, Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband From La Tène to the Viking Age (Dublin 1996).

Goncáles-Marcén et. al 2008: Paloma Goncáles-Marcén/Sandra Montón-Subías/Marina Picazo, Towards an archaeology of maintenance activities. In: Sandra Montón-Subías/Margarita Sánchez-Romero (eds.), Engendering Social Dynamics: The Archaeology of Maintenance Activities (Oxford 2008).

Habermas 1981: Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt am Main 1981).

Hagen 1953: Anders Hagen, Studier i jernalderens gårdssamfunn. Universitetets Oldsakssam-lings Skrifter (Oslo 1953).

Harding 2004: Sandra Harding, Introduction: Standpoint Theory as a Site of Political, Philo-sophic, and Scientific Debate. In: Sandra Harding (ed.), The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader. Intellectual & Political Controversies. (New York and London 2004) 1–15.

Hedeager 2011: Lotte Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality. An Archaeology of Scandina-via AD 400–1000. (London and New York 2011).

Mansrud 2005: Anja Mansrud, Flytende identiteter? – dyrebein i graver og førkristne per-sonoppfatninger. In: Terje Østigård (ed.), UBAS Nordisk 2, Lik og ulik. Tilnærminger til variasjon i gravskikk (Bergen 2005) 133–157.

Montón-Subías 2010: Sandra Montón-Subías, Maintenance activities and the ethics of care. In: Liv Helga Dommasnes/Tove Hjørungdal/Sandra Montón-Subías/Margarita Sánchez-



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Romero/Nancy L. Wicker, Situating gender in European archaeologies (Budapest 2010) 23–34.

Price 2014: Neil Price, Belief & Ritual. In: Gareth Williams/Peter Pentz/Matthias Wemhoff (eds.), Viking Life and Legend (London 2014).

Schütz/Luckmann 1979: Alfred Schütz/Thomas Luckmann, Strukturen der Lebenswelt (Frankfurt am Main 1979).

Sigurdsson 2010: Jon Vidar Sigurdsson, Den vennlige vikingen. Vennskapets makt i Norge og på Island ca. 900–1300 (Oslo 2010).

Skre 1997: Dagfinn Skre, Haug og grav. Hva betyr gravhaugene? In: Ann Christensson/Else Mundal/Ingvild Øye (eds.), Middelalderens symboler. Kulturtekster 11, 37–52. Senter for europeiske kulturstudier (Bergen 1997).

Steinsland 2005: Gro Steinsland, Norrøn religion. Myter, riter, samfunn (Oslo 2005).Øye 2002: Ingvild Øye, Innledning. In: Ingvild Øye (ed.), Vestlandsgården – fire arkeologiske

undersøkelser. Arkeologiske avhandlinger og rapporter fra Universitetet i Bergen (Bergen 2002) 7–13.


Sheep, dog and man

Multi-species becomings leading to new ways of living in Early Bronze Age longhouses on Jæren, Norway

Kristin Armstrong Oma

Abstract

In the Early Bronze Age in northern Europe a transition from building two-aisled to three-aisled longhouses took place. In Norway and Denmark this transition happened around Montelius period I–II, 1800–1500 BC. At the same time, environmental changes consistent with intensified grazing are found in the environmental records. This article argues that in Ro-galand, South-Western Norway, this architectural change happened as the result of intensified human-sheep relationships, born from greater engagement and proximity needed to utilise secondary products from sheep, notably wool. Intensified textile production is attested by the presence of textile production tools and the woven wool costumes preserved in the Danish oak-coffin graves.

This article draws on evidence from Rogaland, investigating the diverse sources pertaining to life in the Early Bronze Age. Evidence from land-use by way of eco-systems and landscape changes, settlements, mortuary practices and rock art are integrated to gain an in-depth un-derstanding of the life-world of Bronze Age people and animals and the nature of the choices they made. A rock art panel portraying sheep, man and dog is found in the heartland of the region, demonstrating that not only were flocks grazing the land – and thus mutually constituting husbandry practices developed, further these agents were entangled in the chore-ography known as sheep herding.

Zusammenfassung

In der frühen Bronzezeit Nordeuropas fand ein Wechsel von zweischiffigen zu dreischiffen Langhäusern statt. In Norwegen und Dänemark erfolgte dieser Übergang ungefähr in Mon-telius Periode I–II, 1800–1500 v. Chr. Zur selben Zeit können Umweltveränderungen, die mit intensivierter Beweidung in Zusammenhang stehen, nachgewiesen werden. In Rogaland, Südwestnorwegen, waren diese Veränderungen in der Bauweise ein Ergebnis einer verstärk-ten Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Schaf, hervorgebracht von der engeren Bindung und Nähe, die nötig war, um sekundäre Produkte, insbesondere Wolle, zu nutzen. Intensivierte Textilproduktion ist durch Funde von Werkzeugen zur Textilverarbeitung und gewebte wolle-ne Kleidungsstücke, die in dänischen Eichensarggräbern erhalten geblieben sind, belegt.

Dieser Beitrag stützt sich auf Erkenntnisse aus Rogaland und untersucht vielfältige Quel-len in Bezug auf das Leben in der frühen Bronzezeit. Nachweise von Landnutzung durch Ökosysteme und Landschaftsveränderungen, Siedlungen, Bestattungssitten und Felsbilder werden herangezogen, um ein detailliertes Verständnis der Lebenswelt der bronzezeitlichen Menschen und Tiere und der von ihnen getroffenen Entscheidungen zu gewinnen. Ein Fels-



24

bild, auf dem Schaf, Mensch und Hund abgebildet sind, wurde im Landesinneren der Region gefunden: Es zeigt, dass Herden nicht nur auf dem Land weideten, so dass sich beidseitig iden-titätsstiftende Praktiken der Viehwirtschaft entwickelten, sondern dass diese Akteure auch in die choreographierte Performanz, die wir Schafzucht nennen, verwoben waren.

Changed way of living, changed way of building

In the early Bronze Age, a monumental change in building houses happened, that led to the transition from two-aisled to three-aisled longhouses. Although no change could be seen from the outside, the introduction of trestles rather than rows of roof-bearing postholes led to novel use of space inside the houses. The factors that caused this change, normally dated to Bronze Age period II (c. 1500–1300 BCE), are not known, nor properly accounted for in the archaeological discourse.

A common assumption is that a result of the architectural change was indoor stalling of domestic animals in one part of the house – the introduction of the byre. Some archaeologists (Tesch 1992, 290; Rasmussen/Adamsen 1993, 138; Rasmussen 1999, 281; Lagerås/Regnell 1999; Årlin 1999; Oma 2007; 2010; 2012; 2013) have previ-ously suggested that the change happened due to changing perceptions of domes-tic animals, leading to them becoming household members and embedded in the life-space of humans. Thus, a more intimate human-animal relationship developed. Although I firmly believe this to be the outcome of the changes in ways of living, it does not account for what instigated the process of making the animals household members. Such changes are most often complex conundrums made up of a number of factors. I suggest that in early Bronze Age Jæren, South-western Norway, sheep were at the heart of such a conundrum. In this article, I will argue that the innovation of wool-based textile production led to a favouring of sheep, and that rearing sheep for this purpose led to a profound change in ways of living and being with other spe-cies – most notably sheep and dogs. This is consistent with a perception of sheep as beings that contributed to the production of the household; their status became that of producers and contributors.

In northern Europe, two-aisled longhouses are interpreted as for human habita-tion only, based upon the lack of internal divisions, signifying that the whole house was used for human habitation (e. g. Tesch 1993; Ethelberg et al. 2000). The develop-ment of architectonic articulations is rather abrupt, with one type of house – the two-aisled – supplanted by the three-aisled longhouse. The latter was rectangular and often large, varying between 50–20m long and 12–7m wide (Harding 2000, 45–48). The transition from two-aisled longhouses with exclusive human occupation to a shared living-space where humans and animals occupy different parts of the three-aisled longhouse occurred in the period between 1800–1500 BC in northern Europe (Rasmussen 1999). Traces of byres and internal divisions appear ca. 1500 BC (Fok-kens 1999, 36). These houses are probably designed to stall animals indoors (Ethel-


Sheep, dog and man

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berg et al. 2000, 203), and traces of byres is the main reason that the transfer from the two-aisled to the three-aisled longhouse is associated with moving livestock into the house. Three-aisled longhouses were common in southern Scandinavia, Northern Europe, the Low Countries, at the Alpine lake sites and all over the Urnfield ‘world’ (Harding 2000, 38). The break in the conservative building tradition of two-aisled longhouses has been suggested to represent “radical or gradual changes in society” presumably of economic, social and political character, according to Tesch (1993, 145). In addition, following Rasmussen (1999) and Årlin (1999) I argue that this shift was, at heart, a change in human-animal relationships. And further, a change in the ontological status of the sheep themselves, not just as assets or property, but as work-ers and makers.

Three-aisled longhouses – the research discourse of indoor stalling

A brief look at the wider context of the transition from two-aisled to three-aisled houses is required in order to provide background to the case studies. Usually, the transition is explained in terms of ways to facilitate everyday life for Bronze Age farmers. The four main functional arguments for stalling animals in houses are (Fok-kens 1999, 36):

• climatic reasons – protecting the livestock from the cold winters (Behre 1998, 94). • a means of protecting cattle against raids (Harsema 1993, 106; Roymans 1999).• enabling the collection of manure (Ijzereef 1981; Fokkens 1991, 1999; Gaillard et al.

1994, 60; Karlenby 1994, 31).• Heating the house. However, Zimmerman (1999) dismisses this argument and his

study shows that that heat from animals does not reach beyond the byre part of the longhouse and has no effect on the human living section.

None of these arguments explain why it was necessary to bring domestic animals into human living spaces, as these benefits could also have been achieved through other means. Several authors (Fokkens 1999; Rasmussen 1999; Roymans 1999; Zim-merman 1999; Årlin 1999) argue that other factors were crucial in choosing to share the house with animals. Rasmussen (1999, 287) suggests that a human to animal re-lationship developed in this period; taking animals into the house was an expression of relations, either of affiliation or ownership. In southern Scandinavia, only very small faunal assemblages have been recovered from house contexts in this period; consequently, the evidence referred to in the discussions comes mainly from the ar-chitectural features of the longhouse. The visible internal divisions in the houses are important to manifest the human to animal relationship, as it suggests that animals were not perceived as humans. The physical separation of animals into a sphere apart, but still in the house, nonetheless signals that the animals were perceived as a valu-



26

able part of the household, and in being taken into the house they were given status as significant household members. In terms of the ownership of animals it was defined by the building that housed them, and the building was defined by the humans living in it. Further, Årlin (1999) argues that, by living inside houses, domestic animals are perceived as pure. Implicitly, so are animal products, even dung. Animals are given the role of producers and agents rather than as food and territory (Årlin 1999, 300). Thus, the relationship between the people and their animals created the longhouse as we know it (Oma 2013).

The agricultural strategy of early and middle Bronze Age in southern Scandi-navia seems to have been founded on an extensive cultivation, where new ground was constantly laid under the plough, requiring draught animals (e. g. Kristiansen 1993). The symbolic presentation of the relationship between humans and cattle on rock art always shows ploughing, but rarely pastoral activities such as herding. On these grounds, Rasmussen (1999, 288) argues that economic and social aspects joined together in creating a new way of living for humans and cattle in early and mid-dle Bronze Age southern Scandinavia. This suggests that livestock management had become pervasive in people’s everyday life. Husbandry was thus a very important task in the lives of early Bronze Age farmers (Rasmussen 1999, 286; Grön 2004, 370). Rasmussen (1999, 287) suggests that the symbolic representation of this human to animal relationship is reflected in graves where the dead are laid on, or wrapped in, cowhide, and in animal offerings at settlement sites.

Bronze Age house typology in relation to Rogaland houses

Archaeologist Sten Tesch was the first to create a typology of Bronze Age houses, based on a large body of material. His subdivision of Scandinavian Bronze Age long-houses from Scania includes 5 categories (Tesch 1993, 162):

• Long-houses: long buildings with no clear division into two sections. • Long-houses: medium sized with a clear division into two sections.• Long-houses: medium sized with three or four roof-bearing trestles and no clear

division into two sections.• Small houses with two roof-bearing trestles.• Sunken floor huts.

The types described by Tesch (1993, 162) are roughly descriptive for all of southern Scandinavia, and are used on a regular basis in works that deal with Bronze Age houses (e. g. Tesch 1993; Borna-Ahlkvist et al. 1998; Streiffert 2001; Borna-Ahlkvist 2002; Grön 2004; Horve 2009). However, worth noting is that the typology is based upon houses from the Köpinge area, and comprises houses dating to Bronze Age period II–III and the late Bronze Age. Period I houses are not considered.


Sheep, dog and man

27

For Rogaland, archaeologist Inger Horve (2009) has created a typology for Bronze Age houses comprising three basic house types:

1. Two-aisled longhouses, with Bronze Age dates.2. Large and wide three-aisled longhouses, stretching beyond 7 m wide, with a span

greater than 3 m between the trestles.3. Smaller, narrow three-aisled longhouses, where the posts of each trestle is less

than 3 m apart, and narrower than 7 m.

Type 1 houses are typically dated to Bronze Age period I. Only five houses were iden-tified as type 1 by Horve (2009, 29–30). Average length is 16 m, average size is 103 square m. Worth noting is that this type occurs infrequently all through the Bronze Age, although in Rogaland none are found later than Bronze Age period I.

Some archaeologists propose that internal divisions in two-aisled longhouses are early indications of dividing the houses into a human living area and a byre-part (Fokkens 1991; Olausson 1999). However, Sæther (2007, 15) suggests that this cannot be the case for the Rogaland, and Norwegian, houses, due to the lack of traces of stalls.

Type 2 houses are dated to Bronze Age period II–V and altogether nine houses were identified to this type (Horve 2009, 30–31). They are listed in Table 1. The houses are often termed halls, due to their great width and large proportions. The average length is 21 m, and average size is as much as 162 square m.

Type 3 houses are mostly dated to Late Bronze Age period IV–VI, although three houses are dated to the Early Bronze Age (Horve 2009, 31) and will be considered here. Average length is 16 m, and average area is 92 square m.

In addition to these types, there are various other settlement types dated to the Bronze Age, smaller houses with or without hearths, as well as open sites and caves and rock shelters (e. g. Horve 2009; Prescott 1991; 1995; 1999). Considering the ques-tion of indoor stalling, houses of types 2 and 3 are most interesting. The data from these houses is compiled in table 1.

Table 1 lists the vital data from the early Bronze Age houses from Rogaland. Three of those included here are two-aisled houses, but the majority are three-aisled. Of the latter, eight are of type 2, which according to Horve (2009, 30) are large and wide three-aisled longhouses, stretching beyond 7 m wide, with a span greater than 3 m between the trestles. Three houses are of type 3, considerably smaller and narrower than type 2. However, both type 2 and 3 are sufficiently large to contain both a human life-space and an animal byre-part.



28

Table 1: Overview of EBA houses from Rogaland. Reworked after Horve 2009, 25–26. EBA is an abbreviation for Early Bronze Age, BA for Bronze Age

House Type Orienta-tion

Length Width Square meter

Roof-bearing

postsØstabø 43/1, Talgje, Finnøy

Two-aisled group 1

W-E 13,0 6,5–6,8 87 3

Nordheim 19/11, Kvåle, House I

Two-aisled group 1

NNW-SSE

23,0 7,2 166 4

Nordheim 19/11, Kvåle, House III

Three-aisled group 3

NNW-SSE

22,0 5,7 125 11 (5–6 pairs)

Kleppe, 1/22, Kleppestemmen-House II


W-E ca 24 ca 9,0 216 12 (6 pairs)

Austbø 7/7, Hundvåg, Lok 20, House II


N-S 23,0 7,75 178 10 (5 pairs)

Berge 37/5, Forsandmoen XLV


WNW-ESE

13,0–14,0

6.45 90 12 (5–7 pairs)

Skeiane 40/246, Sandved, House I


W-E ca 13 ca 8 104 11 (5–6 pairs)

Austbø 7/7, Hundvåg, Lok 20, House I


WNW-ESE

ca 22 ca 7,0 154 14 (7 pairs)

Berge 37/5, For-sandmoen, XC


WNW-ESE

16,5–17,0

7,0 116 8 (4 pairs)

Berge 37/5 Forsandmoen, XXXIIB


WNW-ESE

21,0–22,0

7,8–7,9 172 11 (5–6 pairs)

Berge 37/13–14, Forsandmoen CCXII


W-E 15,8 6,4 101 14 (7 pairs)

Berge 37/5, For-sandmoen LIX


NW-SE 22,0 7,6 167 16 (8 pairs)

Kleppe 1/6, Kleppevarden House I


NW-SE ca 28 ca 7,0 196 10 (5 pairs)


Sheep, dog and man

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Distance between trestles

Wall posts Entrances Internal dividing walls

Fireplaces

Date

Well preserved

Opposing at east end

Eastern part W part EBA I

Well preserved

EBA I

2,4–2,7 Partlypre-served

Opposing at middle

EBA I

4,5–4,75 EBA I–II

ca 3,5 Well preserved

Asymmetri-cally opposed at S part

EBA II

ca 2,5 Preserved Opposing at middle

EBA II

4,0–4,1 None seen SW part EBA II–III

ca 3,5 Asymmetri-cally opposed at middle

Dividing walls in W and E (3 parts)

E and W EBA II–III

Preserved EBA II–III

3,5–3,7 Preserved Poss. asym-metrically opposed at W

E End EBA II–III

2,2–2,6 Preserved Opposing at middle

EBA III

3,8–4,4 Partly preserved (wall ditch)

Opposing at middle

BA II–V

NW part BA II–IV



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Finding a house shared by humans and animals

Waterbolk (1975, 385) has established the following criteria for indoor stalling of ani-mals in three-aisled longhouses:

1. Parallel dividing walls across the long sides of the house2. Extra posts at the inside, and in line with, roof-bearing posts3. Ditches in the lengthwise direction 4. Flooring of stone or wattle 5. Roof-bearing posts more densely placed in the byre section than in the human

living section.

However, we see from Tesch’s and Horve’s typologies outlined above that Scandina-vian Bronze Age longhouses show great variation. Byres have not been identified in all longhouses and only a few especially well preserved examples have clearly defined stalls (Rasmussen 1999, 282 fig 1). It should be considered that excavations of settle-ment areas are often ridden by a bias, due to the methodology of topsoil stripping in which the top soil is removed and the observed layers are under floor-level. But some recently excavated houses near the Limfjord on Jutland have, by their excellent preservation, disproved the attempt by Waterbolk to create neat criteria. Altogether seven such houses have been unearthed – houses that have burnt with humans and animals inside, and the remains from the various individuals were found where they perished in the fire (Nielsen 2002; Olsen 2007; Kveiborg 2008; 2009). None of these houses were constructed in accord with Waterbolk’s criteria. For example, no stalls were found in the house from Søndre Ydby, even though both cattle, horses and a sheep were housed in the byre part. This demonstrates that there is greater complex-ity and several possible solutions when it comes to keeping animals in the house. On these grounds I therefore reject that the strict criteria listed by Waterbolk must necessarily be present when considering the species of inhabitants in the three-aisled longhouse. This opens up for a broader perspective of shared housing between hu-mans and animals.

Evidence for indoor byres is visible traces of stalls. None such are seen in the Early Bronze Age material for Rogaland. But what do stalls indicate? They indicate putting larger animals, such as cattle and horses, into separate compartments along the long walls. Frequently, the discourse around bringing animals into houses in the Early Bronze Age uses the generic term animal, but what is actually referred to is cattle (e. g. Barker 1999). For example, when considering the development of the byre, both Zimmerman (1999, 133) and Waterbolk (1975) discuss width of stalls and cattle size. Cattle is also clearly what Rasmussen (1999) has in mind when she suggests that a management strategy of animals is tied to agricultural activities, not only dung collection.

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